A blog about engagement and marketing

What defines a community

Another non-question question, but it’s all about brands and social media. The question has something to do with metrics, and something to do with engagement.

Communities are created using tools, but aren’t defined by them. As much as Facebook is a nice tool for connecting communities, it’s worth noting that people left Friendster for it. And it’s worth noting too that people are flocking to Hi5 these days.

That’s where we’re at these days. We have communities that are build around tools. That’s Web 2.0. But who are ‘we’?

We’re people. But what about the brands that are doing it well? In my opinion, the Brooklyn Museum does it well. They always have. But as the previous link shows, I’ve talked about them. In this post, I wanna talk about Jeep.

“It’s part networking site, part movie theater, part slide show – and a zillion other things to its fans and followers. Look around. Contribute.”

The title of this post wonders what makes a community. A good start is using the web to link to existing communities. And then letting people know, like Jeep does here, that it all about having fun. There’s stuff to do, a page to Fan on Facebook, a game to play. There are still other games to play.

But it’s not about creating a community on a tool. It’s about linking to all the tools, and all the communities that already exists and pulling them under the brand umbrella.

And then having a little fun. Look, even a brand like Jeep, which is a strong brand, doesn’t need to do it from scratch. We don’t either. Find the communities, link to them, then play in them and find out what else the communities want.